


but i'm right here (by your side)

by starboydjh



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Close enough I guess, Domestic Fluff, Emotions, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Grief/Mourning, Hiking, Jedi as Found Family (Star Wars), Miscarriage, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug (Star Wars), Road Trips, Sad and Happy, but that somehow doesn't feel right?, poe and ben are childhood best friends
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-16
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:01:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28102086
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starboydjh/pseuds/starboydjh
Summary: Rey and Ben (and their dog) take a trip to their family cabin in Maine to escape loss and loneliness for a little while.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	but i'm right here (by your side)

**Author's Note:**

> life sucks sometimes and you gotta write about it

“I forgot how fucking awful Brooklyn traffic is around rush hour time,” Ben grumbled under his breath. This is why he made sure they got an apartment close to a subway line, to avoid the crazy driving during the day. 

“It’s already going to take eight hours to get up to Bar Harbor, what’s another hour?” Rey asked, her eyes cast onto her phone and her feet already up on the dashboard. 

“I just don’t want the dog cooped up in the back for too long. It’ll be a little while before we can get out.”

“Kyber seems just fine, look at him. He loves being in the car.” 

Ben glanced in the rearview at their massive german shepherd, his mouth quirking up in a slight smile at the flannel dog coat Rey had forced onto him before they’d left. He tried his best not to think about how empty the backseat was, how there should be a baby’s car seat strapped into the middle of it instead of their Yeti, and turned his eyes back to the road. They’d already put all the baby’s stuff in storage a month or so ago, and he needed to put it out of his mind. Finally shift out of dad and husband mode and back into just husband mode. 

Rey’s phone dinged, and as she was typing, it dinged another two times again. “Are you answering work emails? We both said no working this week,” he pawed towards her hands as best he could with his eyes still on the road, and she giggled as she pulled the phone away from him.

“No, I turned my out of office reply on before I left our office yesterday. Finn was just checking in. Poe says hi, by the way.” Her smile still wasn’t reaching her eyes fully, but it was closer than it had been in a while. 

“Oh, Poe and I talked on Wednesday. He wanted to find the time for us to come over for dinner. Maybe watch the next Rangers game or something,” Ben said absentmindedly. 

“That’ll be fun, we haven’t seen them outside of work in a few months. Since we stayed with them, probably.” She continued to type with one hand on her phone and held Ben’s hand with her free hand, a comfortable silence falling between the two of them as Ben drove. “Okay, I promise I’m done now,” she said, burying her phone into her hiking backpack on the floor. “No more texts or emails or anything.”

After about four hours, they had to switch who was driving, because Ben had inherited his dad’s bad back and couldn’t drive the entire time. Rey took Kyber over to the pet area at the rest stop while Ben stopped inside for some Slim Jims and a Coke for her. It was easier to be in public now. It didn’t feel like everyone was looking at him with pity in their eyes, as if they knew what had happened and that it had been even worse than dealing with his own mother’s death. 

__

_“She’s trying to be normal, but she’s hurting. Badly. I can tell,” Ben had confided to Poe over drinks on the rooftop of his and Finn’s building. Ben and Rey had been staying with them for about a week and a half at that point, and everything felt as though it was falling apart._

_Poe had done his typical Poe thing and set his drink down, gazing at Ben with those eyes that could stare straight into your soul if he really felt like it. “You are too. I’ve known you since we were kids, Benny. You’re doing that thing you’ve always done where you pretend that shit is fine when it’s not. You can’t do that right now.”_

_Ben had wanted to scoff at him, at the idea that he wasn’t anything but strong. He had to be strong for his wife, who was falling apart at the seams at a speed he’d never seen before._

_But Poe, for all his dumbassery, was right. Losing their child, losing the idea of having his own family hurt worse than nearly anything he’d ever felt before. “It feels like there’s a gaping hole in my chest. Every second of the day. I could’ve had everything, and I was so close to having everything I never allowed myself to picture, but-” Ben coughed and his voice wavered when he met Poe’s eyes. “We lost it. And it shouldn’t hurt-”_

_“Don’t even finish that sentence, you idiot. There’s no should or shouldn’t or right or wrong right now. However you feel about it is how you feel about it and that’s fine.”_

Rey walking back towards the car with the dog pulled him out of the memory. “Did you steal my sweatshirt again?” he asked, smiling at her in the Carhartt hoodie that was way too giant on her. “I bought you one in your size for Christmas.”

She grunted as she gathered Kyber into her arms and lifted him into the trunk of the car as best she could. “I know you did, and I wanted yours instead.” She winked at Ben and stretched up to try and shut the trunk of their massive SUV. Poe liked to make fun of them and call it the Solo Family Bus. “Thank you for the snacks, by the way. I was getting hungry.” 

“I don’t know how you eat that shit. It’s all chemicals.” He made a move to try and shut the trunk for her, but she was able to jump and grab a piece of rope she had attached to the inside of the trunk for moments like these. “And you do know we’ve got actual food in the cooler in the backseat, right?” 

“Yeah, but Slim Jims are the perfect road trip food. You can eat it with one hand and drive still. You can’t do that with oranges,” she said, knocking her shoulder against his while she walked past. He grabbed her gently by the hand and pulled her into him, kissing her briefly before letting her go. Her smile reached her eyes then. 

There was a short period after they lost the baby when they were staying with Finn and Poe where she wouldn’t let him touch her, wouldn’t let him get within a certain distance of her. They didn’t even sleep in the same bed. Rey had banished herself to the couch in Finn’s home office. She was moving further and further out of sight, even though they saw each other every day. The one thing that anchored him to this new life that he’d built for himself was slipping away, and there was nothing he could do about it. In a house full of his family, he’d never felt more alone in his life than he did for those weeks. 

Things were better now. Easier, closer to normal, but not the normal they’d prepared for. It was as though they were learning how to be married again, how to joke with each other, how to just exist as themselves, and a couple, once again.

The rest of the drive went by in a blur. As always, Rey drove like a maniac and barely paid any mind to frivolous things like speed limits and where the lanes were on the highway. Her shoes were strewn somewhere in the backseat. She hated wearing her shoes when she was driving. Ben knew that she probably would make him get out before her and find them at the next rest stop, but he didn’t mind. He was always finding her things for her, keeping track of the details of their lives that she didn’t have the working memory to hold onto. She was a much more ‘big picture’ kind of person than Ben was. 

Slowly but surely, they lost their radio signal again as they crossed over the lines from New Hampshire into Maine. After about ten minutes of static, Rey shoved her phone into Ben’s face. “Here, pick something. If I have to listen to one more second of static, I’m going to lose my mind.”

“Anything specific you want to hear?” he asked her, unlocking her phone with his thumb and scrolling through Spotify. They shared an account, and most of the music on there was Ben’s music anyways, but he figured that he’d ask just on the off chance she had a preference.

“No, whatever you want is fine.” 

She hated adjusting the driver’s seat in their SUV from where Ben liked it, so she was sitting on the very edge of the seat, leaning forward like a tiny old lady to try and see over the wheel. He couldn’t help but laugh at her as she merged past someone, his heart skipping a little at the way she scrunched her nose up, as if that would help her see better. When she glanced back at him, she giggled a little, as if she were bashful about him looking at her. “Hi.”

“Hey lady,” he said with a chuckle and looked down again, picking a random Mt. Joy album from her phone. 

After a little while, they were holding each other’s hands again, and Rey was fidgeting with Ben’s black wedding band. It took her a moment to notice what she was fiddling with. When she did, a huge smile spread across her face. “You’re wearing your real one. You rarely wear it.” 

Ben nodded and smiled sheepishly. Usually, he wore a black silicone one from Target that was more easily replaceable than his thick beskar ring, handmade by Rey as a Christmas present the year before they got married. Now, however, it meant too much not to wear it. “I’ve been wearing it more recently.” 

She had her sunglasses on, but Ben could tell that she was tearing up under them. She brought his hand up to her mouth and kissed it gently. “I love you.”

“I know.” 

Finally, around five that evening, they got to their cabin on Otter Cove, nestled deep into the woods with their own private stretch of beach at the back of the property. Kyber practically launched himself out of the trunk, and Ben was almost tripping over him as he and Rey brought their stuff inside. 

“Do you want to get the bikes down off the top of the car now or just wait until tomorrow?” Rey asked as they each took a side of the Yeti and carried it, the last thing they needed to take inside the cabin. Kyber was following close behind, wagging his tail and panting with happiness. 

“If we want to use them tomorrow, we’ll get them down then, I think. I’ll probably need to clean them off before we can use them,” Ben said as he crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the counter when they set the cooler down in the kitchen.

Rey nodded as she bustled around the kitchen, putting the food they’d brought with them into various cupboards and the fridge. Suddenly, she stopped as if she just remembered something. “Wait, did we bring the blu-ray player with us?” 

“We left it here the last time we came up.” 

She thought for a second and then nodded. “Oh, right, I remember now. I had that like, freak out at home because I forgot to bring it back.” 

Ben had forgotten about that, but once she said it, he had a vivid memory of her sobbing in their living room over it. 

__

_“We can get another one, it’s fine, you’re fine,” Ben had said in as consoling of a tone as he could manage, knowing deep down that the issue wasn’t the issue. It was the week they’d decided to go home from Finn and Poe’s place, and she was still a live wire of emotions. They both were, in truth. Midtown Manhattan had felt like it was light years away from Brooklyn Heights, but now that they were back in their own home, the elephant in the room of the last month and a half was coming to a head quickly._

_“It’s not okay Ben! I ruined it, I fucked it all up. You just wanted to watch a movie together, and I fucked it up,” she had sobbed, so hard she could barely get the words out. Ben could feel her heart pounding through her chest. “I ruined everything. We wanted a family and I ruined everything. It was my fault.”_

_“Shhh, no you didn’t, you can’t control everything. Don’t blame yourself. We’re okay. You’re okay.”_

_Ben realized at that moment that it was the first time since Rey had miscarried that she had let him touch her, let him hold and comfort her the way he’d so desperately wanted to for two months._

He’d tried to bury a lot of those memories, of the two of them working through the loss they’d suffered in the immediate aftermath of it. They were unrecognizable then, neither of them in their right minds for a long, long time. It was easier to recognize the man in the mirror and the woman he loved again, now that they were further removed from it. They weren’t completely back, and there were moments where they still broke, but the breaks were easier to heal now.

Rey standing in front of him and taking his face in her hands pulled him out of his thoughts. “You have your hard thinking face on. What’s up?” 

He felt his face turn up in what he hoped was a close approximation to a smile, settling his hands on her hips. “Just thinking about the last few months. That’s all.” 

She gently wound her arms around his neck and pulled him close, the two of them holding each other and letting the silence speak for itself. “We’re getting through it as a team. Just like we always do,” she whispered after a few quiet minutes, and he nodded. 

“Just like we always will.” 

When they pulled apart, her eyes were full, but she had a happy smile on her face, one that reached her eyes. “Good?” she asked him, and he nodded.

“I’m good. You?”

She nodded too and wiped his eyes. “Now, if we’re both done being sappy pieces of shit...I can finally drink again, we need to get a head start if we’re going to finish all of the beer in the fridge by the end of this week.” 

Ben laughed, a genuine laugh that made his shoulders shake, and kissed the top of Rey’s head as he walked past her to pour their drinks, and she laid out the ingredients for homemade grill pizza. 

The air outside was chilly but bearable after they’d finished dinner. Kyber ran around on the beach, chasing the water in front of a beautiful Maine sunset. Rey’s hand was slightly cold in Ben’s. She was sitting cross-legged in his mother’s old Adirondack chair, and Ben was beside her in his father’s. Han had made the chairs forever ago when Ben’s parents had bought the cabin, long before Ben was even a thought in their minds. Rey made sure to regularly repaint the faded _Han_ and _Leia_ on the back of each of the chairs, a small thing that meant more to Ben than he could ever have explained with words. 

“I wanted us to get a shepherd because they’re smart, how did we end up with a dumb one?” Rey asked. Kyber was now trying to throw the water with his mouth and did not like the taste of the mud and sand he was digging up. 

Ben shrugged while he took a sip of his beer and set it back down on the sand beside him. “I have no idea. But, he makes life interesting, that’s for sure.” 

Rey was quiet for a little while before she spoke again, her voice much smaller than before. “What do you think we were going to have? A boy or a girl?” 

He didn’t even have to think before he answered. “A girl, definitely. No particular reason why. Well, no, the reason is that I’m selfish. Two of you for me to love? That’s better than winning any lottery.”

She was quiet again, and Ben just watched her in her silence. Her eyes were trained out on the water, and Ben couldn’t quite read her face the way he usually could. She wasn’t crying, but she was sad, the deep kind of sadness that had permeated her bones for the last few months. Her free hand tightened slightly on her pint glass, and she took a couple of deep breaths to steady herself.

They’d never really talked about it before, even when Rey was pregnant. Ben for sure didn’t care what they had, and Rey was so excited to become a mother that she didn’t care either. Both of them, when asked, had said that they just wanted a healthy baby. Now that felt like a stupid, sort of obvious answer. 

“I was hoping the baby was a boy. I don’t know if I’ll be a good mum to a girl. I never had a mother, so how could I know how to raise a girl?” 

“Hey,” he said, squeezing her hand and not letting go. “You will be an amazing mother to boys or girls or whoever our children turn out to be. I know it.” She nodded slowly and took a sip from her glass, squeezing Ben’s hand in response without meeting his eyes. “Okay?” he asked her, leaning towards her slightly to emphasize his point. She looked at him with a small, sad smile and nodded again. 

“Okay.” 

They let the noise of the woods around them fill the silence for a little while longer, and then at dusk when the mosquitoes started to come out, they called Kyber back to them. He trotted up to the door, happy as could be, and they once again had to dodge him as they walked inside. 

Quiet between them was more comfortable to handle now too. For the last few months, they always needed to be talking, the silence filling their apartment uncomfortable and harsh. It was a reminder of everything that was going unsaid between them, and what they had lost. Now that they’d talked about it, felt their emotions together, it was far less challenging to let the quiet hang over them. 

The next morning, while Ben was making them breakfast, he heard something cut through the silence that he hadn’t heard in months. 

Rey had sung in the shower since he’d met her, and it was Ben’s favorite part of his morning. She was way more talented than she gave herself credit for, and always got bashful when he mentioned her voice. Her performance choices always seemed to rotate; old classic rock songs she learned about from Ben, top forty pop hits, the music from the last movie they’d watched, anything and everything. There was no limit on what she liked.

After the miscarriage, her singing was replaced with quiet tears she hoped he wouldn’t hear. Some mornings it was so bad that Ben would have to get her out of the shower and just hold her, let her break down and cry in his arms before she put a brave face on for the rest of the world. More recently, she was quiet during the mornings, and she was appearing close to her usual self. Ben knew her well enough to know that she wasn’t her usual self, but she was inching closer with each day.

It was something so little, but his entire world seemed to shift on its axis at that moment. A small glimmer of the woman she’d been before had returned, and his throat was thick with tears as he listened to her.

“What’s on the agenda for today?” Rey asked as she traipsed into the kitchen a few minutes later, taking her plate of waffles and eggs from Ben as she walked past him to sit at the small round table in the room. Ben had intentionally placed a fork onto her plate for her, but just as always, she forewent the utensils and dove into her food with her fingers before she sat down. 

“Fork.” Ben knew that when it came to Rey and food, old habits died hard. She’d eaten with her fingers on their first date, and even tried to eat with her fingers at their wedding. It didn’t matter to him though, he still would remind her to use her fork every meal they ate together for the rest of their lives. She made a little face and wiped her hands before picking it up and winking at Ben, which made him chuckle as he sat down at the table with her. “I figured we could take the boat out on the lake awhile. I don’t think it’s any sort of fishing season right now, so we probably won’t catch anything, but we could try. Maybe a hike after lunch and a movie later tonight?” 

She nodded. “That sounds good. I’ll make some food to bring out with us after we’re done. Did we bring fuel for the boat?”

“Nah, I didn’t want it in the back so close to Kyber and the food for that long. I had my uncle drop some off for us before we got in yesterday.”

“Which uncle, Luke?” 

Ben shook his head and finished chewing his mouthful of eggs before responding. “Chewie, he lives just up the road in Lamoine. Luke lives back down in Virginia now, apparently.”

Rey nodded a little. “Guess the mountain man lifestyle didn’t suit him as well as he thought it would,” she said with a joking smile. She then dove into some story about going to visit Finn and Poe in Virginia when Poe worked in DC, and Ben half-listened to her with what he knew was a dumb smile on his face. Rey was the kind of person who could make the most boring of topics seem interesting. Here she was making a story about the traffic in Virginia the most interesting part of Ben’s day when other people could barely hold his attention for longer than a minute. 

The October air out on the lake was crisp and cool, slightly warmed by the sun in the mid-afternoon. Ben let Rey drive their boat around for as long as she wanted. She wasn’t as reckless driving the boat as the car, because she was still slightly scared of it, but the happiness on her face was clear to see. She loved this place, almost as much as he did, having grown up going to the cabin basically every weekend. It had taken her a long time to realize that she didn’t have to feel guilty about liking things for the sake of liking them, now that her life was stable and more normal than how she’d grown up living. She could have a preference for where they ate, have a preference for how to spend her free time, and it was clear that being outside was one of her favorite things to do. 

He vividly remembered the first time she truly smiled after everything had happened. 

__

_It was Rey’s first day back to work after working from home for a few weeks, and it had seemed like everyone else besides Finn, Poe, and Ben was treading on eggshells around her. Oftentimes, she kept the door to her office at least slightly open, inviting people to come in and ask her about projects or for help resolving any bugs they might’ve encountered._

_That day, however, the door was shut and the blinds on the small window next to her door were closed. She’d come in later than she usually did, and tried to sneak in before anyone noticed her. Ben hadn’t fought it, and had gotten ready in the guest bathroom like he had been for a few weeks so he wouldn’t wake her up that morning._

_Around one in the afternoon, his phone buzzed with a text from Rey, asking for him to come down to help her with something quickly. He tried his best not to sprint down the hallway and to the elevator as a slight panic wormed its way into his veins. Poe called out to Ben as he stood across from Poe’s door waiting for the elevator. “She’s fine Benny, run any faster and you’ll slip.”_

_When he opened the door to Rey’s office she gave him a tight-lipped smile that nearly bordered on a grimace. “Can you come to look at this for me? I have no idea what I did but every time I try and run this section of the code everything goes to shit,” she said. Her sentence was punctuated by the clatter of her gently tossing her glasses on her desk. Her face contorted in pain slightly and she rubbed her forehead as if she had a headache. “I’m not keeping you from anything, right?”_

_“No, not at all. I was trying to avoid going to a meeting with Hux so you’re actually doing me a favor. What were you working on?” Ben asked as he slid himself inside the small crack in the door._

_“Can you shut the door, please? Sorry, I just-I can’t deal with anyone besides you and the Damerons today,” she said without opening her eyes._

_“Oh yeah, sorry.” Ben turned around quickly to shut the door as quietly as he could. “So, what was your issue?”_

_“I was in the testing lab earlier and none of BB8’s legs were synchronized. They were moving fine but not enough to give him any balance or propel him forward.” She opened her eyes again when he stood beside her and leaned down to look at her computer monitor. “I asked Finn and Poe and neither of them could figure out what I did.”_

_”Well, let’s see what you’re cooking here,” Ben muttered quietly to himself, his eyes darting over her code and trying to make sense of it. As he did so, she leaned her head against his shoulder and put her glasses back on to see what he was doing. Normally they wouldn’t be touchy like that in their place of work, even though their office was a casual environment. Right then though, neither of them cared._

_“Do you think it’s too soon for me to come back to work?” She asked. “Finn was all worried about me earlier.”_

_Ben barely hesitated before he shook his head. “If you feel ready to be back, then no. You know what I always tell you. You’re your own best advocate. Besides, Finn’s our brother in law. It’s his job to worry about you.” He gently shrugged his shoulder that she was leaning against and pressed a quick kiss against the top of her head. “Up, just for one second. I see what you did.”_

_She moved so he could type something in quickly, and something that caught her eye made her start laughing. “I’m sorry, it’s just - you have on one of my socks,” she said around her giggles._

_Ben looked down and, sure enough, standing out against his black jeans and sneakers was one of the socks Rey usually wore around the house, bright blue and patterned with dinosaurs wearing swim trunks and bikinis._

_The sock hardly mattered, Rey’s broken code hardly mattered, the fact that he gave a presentation to investors that could potentially earn their company millions of dollars with mismatched socks hardly mattered. All that mattered was that his wife was smiling and laughing, genuinely laughing, for the first time in three months._

After that day, sometimes he intentionally wore mismatched socks, just in case Rey happened to spot them and get a little giggle out of it. He’d do anything to keep her smiling, Ben realized.

After they switched who was manning the boat, he circled them around one of the smaller offshoots of Bar Harbor and pointed at a massive tree. “See that oak right there? My dad and uncle Lando used to park my dad’s boat there to fish, and if my mum made them bring me with them when I was little, my dad would tie me to that tree so I couldn’t run away.”

“You’re making that up, there’s no way that’s true.”

He laughed quietly and nodded. “It’s true, I’m pretty sure there’s a photo of it somewhere in that box of my dad’s stuff in our storage unit in the garage.” 

“Well now I have an incentive to actually go through that stuff, I want to see that picture.” 

She’d been avoiding going through the stuff in their storage unit because that’s where they’d put the things they’d bought for their baby after the miscarriage. He understood it, and never once tried to push her to do anything she was uncomfortable with, opting to just let it be and keep the peace for a little while. The fact that she was willing to even step into the garage earlier in the week was movement in the right direction, and now that she was talking about actually going through it, was another sign Rey was returning. 

Ben masked it with a laugh and settled his hands on her shoulders when she sat on his lap and took control of the boat, finding a shady spot near a small island to tie off and eat the sandwiches she’d made them that morning. As Rey unwrapped her sandwich, she glared at Kyber, who was already begging for their food. “You can have a small bite after I get to eat some,” she said around a bite in her mouth. Ben watched, trying to hold back his laughter as Rey held the sandwich out towards their dog. Kyber went to take a bite, but before he could chomp down on the rest of it, she pulled it back quickly. “Gentle. Just a little bit,” she reminded him, speaking to him as if he were an actual human being. 

To Ben’s surprise, the dog listened to her, and took a tiny bite of her food when she held it out for him. “You’re like the Kyber whisperer. I can’t get him to listen to me like that.”

“Well, you have to be assertive. As much as you put on the act we all know who the real assertive one is in this equation,” Rey said with a wink. 

“I thought we also agreed no more people food for him,” Ben said as he felt the tips of his ears heating up slightly. 

She shrugged and fed Kyber a Dorito from the bag in between them. “We’re on vacation, he can have a little treat.” She smiled that beaming smile at him that made him question if the earth orbited the sun, or if the earth orbited her. “We all get treats this week. That’s why I brought the ingredients for your mum’s brownies with us.” 

Ben got unreasonably excited when she mentioned Leia’s famous brownies. She made them for just about every event and party they had at home growing up, and when Ben came home from his tours overseas in the Marines, those brownies were always the first thing she made for him. Ben and Rey’s wedding wasn’t a potluck, but Leia still made enough for everyone to have anyway. “The ones with the instant coffee in them?” 

“The very same.”

All Ben could do was lean in and kiss her in thanks. “I adore you so much.”

She giggled and cupped his face with her hand, kissing him a couple more times. “Right back at you.”

They both sat there for a moment before they realized what they’d said and made the same faces in mock disgust. “We’re gross sometimes,” Rey said with another giggle. 

“As gross as Cal and Meren?” Ben asked, which made Rey groan. 

“No, I don’t think anyone could ever top their levels of mushy romance. Not even us.” 

They talked every now and then as they brought themselves back to their small dock by their cabin, just observations of the wildlife they saw and anything else that popped into their minds. While they hiked up the mountain that was behind their home, Kyber ran ahead of them as they picked their way along the trail they’d hiked up who knows how many times. Occasionally, they’d need to offer hands to help pull the other one up a steep portion of rocks, and Rey would sometimes stop to admire the nature they came across. The spiderwebs were her favorite. She always noticed the small things that Ben would’ve never noticed. Her observations helped the forest come alive around them. 

Everything about the way her mind worked was interesting to him, in a way that he couldn’t explain. Whenever she spoke, she had something important to say, and in their office, she was a force to be reckoned with. He’d also found over the years of them working and building their lives together that they had a sort of mind-meld, as if one could sense what the other was thinking without needing any words. It had been clear from the second they met that something about them being together was different than any other relationship they’d ever had before. They had no official conversation about their relationship or becoming more serious. Their life together grew naturally between the two of them, without the need for conversations.

For Ben at least, the ability to read Rey’s mind seemed to have been turned off in the last few months. They both were such a mess of emotions ever since it happened, and there were points where Ben could barely read his own thoughts, let alone Rey’s. Everything between them had felt too quiet, but now the unspoken conversations they had so easily before were back. 

“I forget sometimes that there’s this much green in the world,” she said quietly as they sat at the peak of the mountain, looking out over the other mountains of the Acadias. “It’s incredible.”

“I miss being up here when we’re back in New York. No sirens, no horns, no people. Plenty of space and room to just exist, we’re not all sandwiched on top of other people.” 

She was quiet for a second. “Do you ever think about moving up here? Just us and the dog. It might be kind of nice.”

It was his turn to fall quiet. On principle, it wasn’t a terrible idea. He knew this land like the back of his hand, his uncle was a few minutes away, there was plenty of room for Finn and Poe to visit if they wanted to, and they’d still be able to drive to visit. In practice, however, things would be very different. “What about the rest of our family? Finn and Poe would miss us. Eight hours is a lot longer than four.” 

Rey shrugged and took a sip of water when Ben offered her his metal water bottle. “We’ve lived away from each other before and we managed. You’re just so happy here. It’s like all your stress melts away as soon as we cross into Maine.”

“I don’t think Bar Harbor is exactly a booming spot for two robotics programmers, though. We’d have to rethink career options.”

She laughed. “You’ve got me there. We’ll table this conversation for now.”

He nodded once and stood up, offering her a hand to help her up. “First, we have to get back down before it gets dark outside.”

They always seemed to rush their way up this particular trail, but on the way down, Rey stopped now and then to pick some of the blueberries off the bushes on the path. Some of them she’d eat, she’d slip some to Ben, and even had Kyber try a few. The dog would almost always spit them out immediately, but Ben thought her determination was admirable. She tried to save some of them to bake with, and usually, she’d just eat all of them before they got down the mountain. Today, however, she’d saved enough to attempt muffins the next morning. 

Since Rey had made lunch that day, it was Ben’s job to make dinner for them. As he picked through their fridge to find something to cook for them, Rey settled down at the island in the kitchen with a book. After a few minutes, she shut her book and looked at Ben. “What are we getting the Damerons for Christmas?”

He chuckled slightly. “The weeklong Disney cruise we surprised them with in the summer wasn’t enough?” 

“That was for our five year anniversaries, Christmas is months after August,” Rey said, leaning over to swat at Ben’s hand. 

He laughed again and swatted back at her. “Okay, and their anniversary is in April, ours is December. August was the midpoint between them. And we paid for the whole thing.”

Rey made a face at him. “Ben, they’re our family. We have to get them something.”

“I’ll leave you to that. You’re so good at getting gifts for everyone.” He was quiet for a second, then pointed at her with the spoon in his hand. “No trips though?”

Rey made a little ‘x’ over her heart. “No trips, I promise.” 

Over dinner, they talked about everything and nothing once again, and Rey brought up the idea of a movie night. They’d had movie nights frequently when they started dating, and sometimes even paired them with what they jokingly called sleepovers; they’d spread blankets out over the couch in their old apartments and sleep there instead of in a bed. Having a sleepover would be next to impossible now with Ben’s back if he wanted to walk in the morning, but the memory brought up something warm in his chest. 

About halfway through the movie, a thought struck him. “Had you come up with any names?” Ben asked. “I was thinking of that earlier.”

“I like the name Alexander, that’s a nice name,” Rey said absently as she took a sip of wine, her eyes locked on the movie they were watching. 

“Is that just because we got to see Hamilton a couple of months ago?” Ben asked. Rey rolled her eyes and gently shoved his shoulder.

“No, not entirely! Okay, fine, maybe a little bit.” Rey made a ‘gimme’ motion with her hands and pointed at Ben’s glass of bourbon to get him to switch with her, something they did often. “Tell me what you think of that wine, by the way. Rose gave it to me but I’m not sure if I like it or not.” 

“Oh, you’re pawning it off on me now?” he said with a chuckle before he tried it. He let it sit on his tongue for a second, then shrugged and handed it back to her. “It’s fine, I’m not a wine connoisseur or anything like Rose but it tastes just fine.” 

She nodded. “Okay, so it’s not just me then.” When she looked at him again, she smiled. It almost reached her eyes, but not entirely. “But back to our conversation,” she said, turning herself towards Ben and tucking her legs under her. “Names. I think that any of our kids should have shorter names. Our whole family has short names. Ben, Finn, Poe, Rey. All nice and short. It would be weird to have one person whose name was super long while everyone else has super short names.” 

“So what were you thinking?” 

She shrugged and swirled her wine around. “I liked the name Tai for a boy. It means ‘extreme,’ or ‘great.’ I thought it would go well with our names.” 

He thought about it for a moment, said it a couple of times out loud, and let it sit on his tongue the same way that he did the wine earlier. “Tai Solo. I like that. What about middle names?” 

“I couldn’t think of a middle name. Basically all I know about names is from you. I know you have about fifteen middle names, but most people only have one, right?” 

Ben nodded. “Most people do not have an obnoxious name like I do, no.”

Rey giggled, leaning towards him a little. “Benjamin Chewbacca Naberrie Skywalk-” 

He cut her off playfully with a wave of his hand. Her smile reached her eyes for a brief moment. “Okay, okay, yes we get it. Back to middle names. All of my middle names are honor names. Both of my uncles, my grandmother. Important people.”

“Just so we’re both on the same page, we’re not giving our son Poe as a middle name,” Rey said, trying to hold a laugh at bay.

“Oh, God no. He’d never let us live it down if we did. Plus, the two don’t really flow together. Tai Poe Solo. It’s a little too short, yknow?”

“It feels weird to use Tai now, though. I wouldn't want to use it for another child. I had like-” she paused and cleared her throat, waving her hand in a weird little circle. “I had my heart set on using that name for the baby and then...” She let her sentence drop off and just kept her eyes locked on the corner of the rug. 

Ben nodded, swallowing back his own tears as he did so. “And we don’t have to use that name.” She still wouldn’t make eye contact with him, and after a brief moment, he reached out to rub her shoulder gently. “Rey? You still with me?”

Rey cleared her throat and nodded. “Yep, I’m here.” She set her wine down on the coffee table beside them and cupped his face in her hand, the side of his face that was cleaved in two by the scar from his accident. She had a wistful smile on her face, and her eyes were misty. “I love you, you know that?” 

He huffed out a sad laugh and shook his head. “I don’t deserve it, after how I’ve acted these last few months.”

Usually, she got angry with him when he said things like that, but instead of getting angry, she wiped the quiet tears out from under his eyes. “No matter what you’re always deserving of love. From everyone in our whole little weird family.”

“But when you needed me the most - when we needed each other the most - I just shut off. I blocked you out and left you stranded, when we both depend on each other so heavily. You didn’t deserve that.” He cleared his throat and continued, filling the space she’d left quiet between them. “I kept doing that blame thing I’d done in the past, like what if this was punishment for everything that happened with my family, especially my dad, y'know? And this time it involved you, not just me. I’d convinced myself that you were being punished for things that I had done, and it just sent me into a spiral of blaming myself and hating who I used to be.” He paused again, letting the silence hang between them. It wasn’t uncomfortable, and didn’t feel like it needed to be filled by anything. 

“And there were so many instances where all I wanted to do was call my mom and hear her tell me it would all be okay, and I couldn’t,” he said, his voice breaking on the last word. Normally he’d be self-conscious about showing any kind of emotion, but this time he wasn’t. Rey was letting him experience his emotions, actually feel them without judgment, a luxury he wasn’t afforded for a long time.

Rey was quiet for a moment, fixing Ben’s hair in that way that she did when she was trying to hold herself together. “We all were dealing with it in our own ways. I don’t blame you for coping with losing our child how you needed to cope,” she said. The edges of her mouth turned up in a slightly sad smile. “None of this was either of our faults. The two of us still need to get rid of that guilt gene we have. Bad things happen, and sometimes there’s no cause for them. And when the bad things do happen, we’re right here for each other.” She paused and then her smile became more mischievous. “You’re stuck with me, kiddo. Sorry ‘bout it.” 

She held her hand up for a fist bump, and Ben couldn’t help but laugh as he mirrored her gesture. There was something comforting about the black diamond on Rey’s engagement ring gently digging into his finger when her hand met his. Rey was one of the only people he knew who wore her wedding and engagement rings all the time, even if it was just the two of them alone. She had since the day he’d proposed to her, on the same mountain they’d hiked earlier in the day. “For better or worse.” 

Rey laughed too and reached up to wipe the tears off his face. “I like hearing you laugh again. We’ve both been missing that.” 

They barely paid attention to the rest of the movie, opting to share stories from their childhoods and recent memories of their vacations, holidays, and random nights spent at home with their family. Things had felt dark, and as if they couldn’t ever see a light at the end of the tunnel again. Tonight, it felt like a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. He didn’t think that he needed to talk about it that much, but he felt as though things were starting to make sense again. He didn’t feel totally normal, but he felt okay again.

Something prodding into his side the next morning woke him up from a deep, dreamless sleep. “Ben. Benjamin. Wake up, I made omelettes.” 

“What time is it?” 

“Like nine. I’ve been up for a little while already. Long enough to bake.” When he was able to crack open his eyes and get his glasses on his face after a significant struggle (and another rogue use of his full first name by his wife), he was greeted with Rey standing over him. Her socked foot was still nudging at his hip as she tried to balance two plates of food in her hands. He instantly knew which plate was his, because it had two of Rey’s blueberry muffins on it instead of only half like the other one did.

“You let me sleep in that late?” he asked in almost disbelief. He rarely slept past seven in the morning, even on the weekends.

“Yeah, because we made each other actually feel more than two emotions last night. Those suck up all our energy. Here or the kitchen?” she asked when he was somewhat coherent and sitting up in their bed. He answered her question by stretching his arms out towards his plate, and Rey snorted out a laugh as she handed it to him. “I knew that would be the answer.”

“Hey, don’t judge me. It’s cold outside, and you’re like a tiny space heater,” he said around a mouth full of food. The bed dipped slightly as she got back under the covers beside him, the window across from them providing a sort of natural TV for them to watch as they ate. Rey had put some music on in the main portion of the cabin, and if Ben focused he could hear Bob Dylan on the speakers in the living room. He still needed to have Poe help him wire the speakers to the small porch on the front side of the house, but that could wait for a little while. “What’s the plan for today?” 

Rey shrugged as she tore a piece of her omelette off with her fingers. “How about a lazy day? Hang around, watch movies, maybe go for a short hike a little later if we feel like it.” 

Ben looked at her over his glasses with what he hoped was a skeptical look on his face. She returned the look, and they both started laughing at each other until their sides hurt. “Lazy day sounds like a great plan,” Ben said once they’d calmed down enough to talk again.

Ben was slowly starting to realize that it was enough to just be the two of them for a while, without needing to get to the next life milestone that had been laid out in front of him since he was a child. He was always chasing some dream that someone else had for him, without thinking about what he truly wanted out of life. Even after his father and mother had both passed, he was still chasing their dreams for him, consistently guided by the ghost of a future he thought would make him happy. Being here, in his favorite place, with his favorite person, and the dumbest smart dog in the world, was enough to fill his soul with enough happiness to last him for a while. 

“I love you,” Ben said out of the blue, and instead of reacting by pretending to vomit like Rey sometimes did, she smiled her radiant smile at him. 

“I love you too.”

**Author's Note:**

> not even gonna lie to you guys i wrote half of this actually in a cabin in maine, and the other half while smashed alone in my hotel room after drinking around the world at disney. in related news, being an adult owns
> 
> drop me a line: starboydjh.tumblr.com
> 
> help fuel my coffee addiction: ko-fi.com/hadley
> 
> twitter for reylo stuff: @fanofhads


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